Physical Torture Meme

[ex_victimized943]

TRIGGER WARNING: this meme contains extremely graphic content.
if you are not comfortable with drastic violence, please don't proceed.


i. self-mutilation. for whatever reason, you're your own worst enemy. can another character save your from themselves, or are they in the same boat? maybe it's neither and they just like to watch.
ii. otherwise inflicted. one character is the torturer, one character is the tortured. state your preference or assume the top commenter is in the tortured position.

1. DISMEMBERMENT/AMPUTATION: You should never get too attached to your limbs. Who knows when you'll lose one? Or have it taken from you. Hands, feet, arms, elbows, if it sticks out, it can be snapped, sawed, crushed or pulled off. Better staunch that stump quick, unless life isn't worth living without your favourite foot.
2. IRREVERSIBLE SENSORY DEPRIVATION: See, speak, and hear no nothing. While temporarily muting a sense can heighten the others and make for a fun time in the short term, it's probably not an adjustment you'd want to make permanently. Too bad. Perforated eardrums, plucked eyes, and cut tongues fall under this category -- and don't forget those other senses you could always do without, like touch and smell.
3. FLAYING/SKINNING/SCALPING: People are layered. Time to find out exactly how much. Peel, shave, or pull the flesh off yourself or others and maybe you'll expose their true nature. Or organs. Probably that second thing.
4. SCARIFICATION/TATTOOING/BRANDING: Make your mark. Ritualism, boredom, or for any number of reasons, it's time to claim what's yours. Brand it with red-hot iron, slice it with a scalpel, write it in permanent ink -- make sure you're never forgotten.
5. BLUNT TRAUMA: Stop the blood flowing and keep the fun going. Blunt trauma involves any painful force that doesn't break the skin. Hitting, kicking, beating with brass knuckles or bats, and breaking bones. Nobody said anything about internal bleeding, did they?
6. TRAPS: From medieval torture devices such as iron maidens to the infamous reverse beartrap of the Saw series, isn't technology fascinating? Push your face through knives to activate the switch that releases your bonds, or stretch yourself thinner on a rack. For more implements, check the instruments of torture page.
7. PERFORATION/LACERATION: The opposite of blunt force trauma, this option is for those that prefer to dig a little deeper. Cut the skin with knives, suspend it with hooks, lash it with whips. Shallow or mortal wounds, see red red red!
8. EATEN ALIVE: A body is a terrible thing to waste. Perhaps you're the guest of honor at a cannibal's feast, you've been thrown to the dogs, or zombies, or there's always the good old brown rats ready to burrow through your bowels with a little incentive.
9. TEMPERATURE: Burned, boiled, frozen, drenched in wax, it's uncomfortably hot or cold in here and taking off all your clothes probably won't do the trick this time.
10. PHARMACOLOGICAL: You're the guinea pig in this ethics-committee-bypassing experiment, lucky you! Injections are the name of the game. Induce pain, pleasure, hallucinations, sleep, sleep deprivation, the sky's the limit. Or just toss them into a pit of hypodermic needles. Cause you know. That's cool. Oh and don't forget about withdrawal!
11. FREAK-FOR-ALL: Don't see it above? Don't worry about it. If it hurts, it belongs in here, so let your imagination run free, you twisted wild thing, and wreak a little misery. ♥

 

Comments

[consulting_freak]

For just a second, Sherlock feels a stab of discomfort because of the nurse's comment that he's not helping. Of course, he's not helping. He doesn't have a clue what to in a situation, so the reminder is both unnecessary and disheartening. But shortly after, John's heart rate lowers and he fixes the nurse with a very condescending look of victory.

"I've been in bed all morning," he complains to the nurse. He won't be lying down, but he does lean against the side of it while he watches her work. He's only seen this nurse a couple of times and he's wary of hospital staff regularly. Knowing Moriarty is still at large only makes him more concerned that he could have people within the hospital staff. Either to watch them or to do nefarious things to hinder their recovery. Either way, Sherlock is going to keep a careful eye on things now that John's in the room with him.

The nurse gives him a look, but she seems satisfied enough with his partial rest. As soon as she's leaving, Sherlock calls out to her to talk to the doctor about getting John's pain medication dose raised. He knows she hears him, but she doesn't acknowledge it outwardly.

When she's out of the room, Sherlock drags his IV stand back over to John's bedside. He'll move the chair that Mycroft had been sitting in later, but for now he wants to get look at him from a better angle. Even though he's not a doctor, Sherlock takes a good look at all of john's injuries and compares them to the 'file' of when he'd first hovered over him in the ICU. There's not much change between the two images, however.

"You've been in a coma for eight days," Sherlock explains. He seeks out John's left hand, the one he'd seen exhibit a small amount of movement before. He's too careful when he touches it, but that's because he doesn't want to give John another fright. "You've got some tubing in your throat, so you shouldn't try to speak. If you can managed to move your fingers, we can communicate that way."

[shatteredconductor]

They've pulled the blankets down a bit to the waist so he doesn't get overheated, and beneath the hospital gown, it looks like there's a lot of bandages, which would tally with what Sherlock might have seen when the lights went on. They'd kicked his chest a lot, as well as whipping him severely, burning, and cutting the front and back of his torso. If Sherlock could see under the gown, he'd see the bruising is fading a bit there too, but there are still quite a few livid cuts that'll probably scar badly. And they'll have to start doing skin grafts soon on some of the burns, which are going to be incredibly painful as they heal.

He shifts just slightly and moans a little--God, he hurts all over. But his shoulder especially, and it feels like it's elevated in an odd way to keep the pressure off the part that's healing. Burn? Did they burn--he shudders again, mind snapping pieces of memory back together, remembering a torch moving closer and closer.

He tries to distract himself by seeing if he can move his fingers around what he's sure is a cast now, managing after a few minutes to get a light twitch. Eight days? That's a hell of a long time, and he still feels unbelievably weak. How bad was he?

He can tell it's not a ventilator in his throat. Feeding tube? But he really wants to know...he can't remember and it frightens him, mind shying from the possibilities.

"D...d...rk...?" It's extremely muddied but it might be something Sherlock can work out. He twitches his arm towards his face again, confused. Are there bandages on his eyes? Is that why he can't see?

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock can't see under the gown, but he can see the rises and falls just under the fabric that indicate bandages. He remembers vividly just what John had looked like when the lights had gone on in the cell, though he hadn't been quite in his own mind at that moment.

He quiets for a moment, watching the way John comes to terms with being conscious. Without much in terms of communication between them, there's an odd disconnect that Sherlock has to work around. His friend is in very bad shape and he's frustrated since he can't ask him all the questions he would like to. Well, he could ask, but he wouldn't get the answers he's looking for. Even if there's no permanent brain injury, the amount of medication running through John's body and the time it would take for his brain to recuperate from the coma would make it difficult for him to speak and think like himself regardless of the skull fracture.

When John starts to move his hand, Sherlock draws back and watches the movements. He has no qualms with restraining John if it looks like he might accidentally hurt himself, but he also doesn't want to keep his friend shying away from curiosity.

"Dark?" Sherlock asks, making sure that's what he's heard. He doesn't remember the eye trauma. That's a difficult thing, he thinks. Explaining to someone damage like this should be easy. Clinical detachment, just explain the injury and let the patient do the processing. So why is it so hard to say now?

"John," Sherlock starts, reaching up and touching his friend's forehead above the bandage. It's at the hairline, so he could brush his fingers over John's hair if he'd like to. "They, ah... they took your eyes. Severed and cauterised the optical nerve as well, so that's why things look so dark," he explains, keeping his voice calm and calculating like usual. John, being of a medical mind, should know the implications of the optical nerve being damaged. Irreparable blindness.

[shatteredconductor]

With the heavy cast, he can only manage a small twitch, not enough to get his hand up to his face. When Sherlock explains about his eyes he freezes for a moment, blank and uncomprehending.

Eyes. They took...they took his eyes.

"I think I'll blind him, you know, Johnny. See how he does with deducing in the dark. It'd be quite the challenge, wouldn't it?"

"Don't...don't you...don't touch...don't touch him, you bastard."

"Oh? You want to stop it? You know what you have to do."

He hung in the straps, not sure he could force it out. Even for Sherlock...his eyes. God...his eyes. Sherlock. Without his eyes... There are plenty of doctors. The only one in the world, I invented the job. "Please." He clears his throat, breath sharp and painful, head throbbing. "Take...blind me instead."

A sob wrenches out of him despite himself, memory crashing back. Mind fighting against it, wanting to reject it, and knowing it's true. Knowing there's no medicine on earth that could do anything to fix that. He turns his head away, trying to hide it, but his shoulders heave silently.

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock watches as the emotion contorts his friend's face. With so many bandages over him, it feels like only seeing part of the full effect. His imagination fills in the rest. John's eyebrows swooping downward, crinkling the skin between them. His hairline appearing to move upward from the lack of tension in the muscles closer to it.

He really didn't remember. And, now I've made him...

He's not good with crying. He's never been. Usually he pretends to not notice or makes an excuse to remove himself from the situation. Sometimes, he says cruel things that barb into the emotions of who he's talking to since they have the nerve to start crying.

He doesn't want to leave John's side. He doesn't want to make him hurt, either. John will know he's not stupid enough to not notice, but he might appreciate him not saying as much.

"As far as your injuries and complications go, your eyes have been the most severe. You've also got several compound fractures in both feet and your right hand. Broken ribs, punctured lung, internal bleeding due to blunt force trauma (that's over with, in any case), several lacerations (from a whip, it looks like), incise wounds from a small knife, second and third degree burns, and a depressed skull fracture on the parietal lobe near the motor cortex," he explains methodically. If he were in John's situation, he would want to know every detail of his condition. Surely, John would want the same?

[shatteredconductor]

The details wash over him without really hearing them, but he's shuddering with emotion, trying to control himself. He's blind. The thought keeps pounding through his head, the flash of the white hot knife before it cut into him.

His eyes. His eyes. That explains the bandages, would have bled--oh God, the knife--he wants to be sick, but he can't, not with the damn tube down his throat. He's trembling without realizing it, and it hurts, moving hurts a lot even with the painkillers he can tell are coursing through him.

I'm never going to see again.

The thought crashed over him, crashed down on him. He's never going to see Sherlock's improbable, changeable eyes. Never going to watch the sun come up. Never going to get that feel of a perfect shot that you know is going to hit the target.

Never going to stitch up a patient. Never going to run through the streets of London chasing criminals.

He only half remembers after that, the pounding of his head and the searing pain of his eyes making thought almost impossible. But he remembers the hand running over his cuts, the voice in his ear.

"He won't need you now, Johnny. He'll be better off running on his own."

[consulting_freak]

Sherlock doesn't see or hear any of the internal struggles that John's going through. From his perspective, his voice and words have a direct impact on John's mood. The description of the injuries alone seem to hurt John like he's the one standing over him with the whip or the knife. Or that God-forsaken blow torch.

"Sorry," Sherlock says, voice sounding distracted. John could probably imagine the distant look on his face as Sherlock tries to grasp for something by sorting through dusty old boxes in the farthest reaches of his Mind Palace.

Nothing.

He sighs and pets back John's hair. He's extremely careful of the bandage covering up the head wound, so much that he avoids the cloth wrap even when he knows the skull fracture isn't under that portion. That's the injury he's still scared most for. The eyes, though devastating and tragic, can be worked around.

"John, he won't hurt you again. I promise you that," he tells his friend, trying once more at consoling, and not knowing that he's completely off the target in his assumptions. He starts to say 'I'll kill him first,' but thinks twice. It's not that he is particularly private about his desire to torture the other man to death. He'd find that a perfectly reasonable thing and hopes John would agree. It's the thought of the fear of Moriarty's continued existence that stops him. It's bad enough the phantom in John's mind is hurting him this badly.

[shatteredconductor]

Continued here.